Feb 9 (Reuters) - Sony ( SONY ) said on Sunday that all

PlayStation Plus members would automatically receive an

additional five days of service, after a global outage disrupted

the PlayStation Network (PSN) for about 18 hours on Friday and

Saturday.

"Network services have fully recovered from an operational

issue. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank the

community for their patience," the Japanese electronics and

entertainment giant said in a post on X on Sunday, without

specifying the cause of the outage.

The outage, which began late Friday, left users unable to

sign in, play online games or access its online store. By

Saturday evening, the company said PSN had been restored.

The PlayStation Network is a key service for Sony's ( SONY ) gaming

division, supporting millions of users worldwide.

At its peak, the outage affected about 7,939 users in the

U.S. and around 7,336 users in the UK on Saturday afternoon,

according to Downdetector.com, which tracks outages by collating

status reports from several sources, including users.

"PlayStation is back up again after being down for a whole

day. Sony ( SONY ) at least saved millions of Gamers their Sunday right

after ruining their Saturday," a user posted on X.

Sony ( SONY ) has dealt with more severe outages in the past. In

2014, a cyberattack forced the PlayStation Network offline for

several days during the holiday season. A more serious breach in

2011 compromised the personal data of nearly 77 million users,

leading to a month-long shutdown and a regulatory investigation.

(Reporting by Surbhi Misra in Bengaluru

Editing by Ros Russell)